October Vagabonds Part 5

At length our ways parted, and, with cheery good-byes and good wishes, our young friend went rattling along, leaving in our hearts a warm feeling of the brotherhood of man--sometimes. He had let us down close by the "High Banks," the rumour of which had been in our ears for some miles, and presently the great effect Nature had been preparing burst on our gaze with a startling surprise. The peaceful pastoral country was suddenly cloven in twain by a gigantic chasm, the Genesee River, dizzy depths below, picturesquely flowing between Grand Canon rock effects, s.h.a.ggy woods clothing the precipitous limestone, and small forests growing far down in the broad bed of the river, with here and there checkerboard s.p.a.ces of cultivated land, gleaming, smooth and green, amid all the spectacular savageness--soft, cozy spots of verdure nestling dreamily in the hollow of the giant rocky hand. The road ran close to the edge of the chasm, and the sublimity was with us, laying its hush upon us, for the rest of the afternoon. Appropriate to her Jove-like mood, Nature had planted stern thickets of oak-trees along the rocky edge, and "the acorns of our lord of Chaonia" crunched beneath our feet as we walked on.

After a while, sure enough we came upon "Billy the Cobbler," seated at his bench in a little shop at the beginning of a straggle of houses, alone, save for his cat, at the sleepy end of afternoon. We had understood that he had been crippled in some cruel accident of machinery, and was hampered in the use of his legs. But, unless in a certain philosophic sweetness on his big, happy face, there was no sign of the cripple about his burly, broad-shouldered personality. He was evidently meant to be a giant, and was what one might call the bo'sun type, bluff, big-voiced and merry, with a boyish laugh, large, twinkling eyes, a trifle wistful, and the fine teeth of the district.

"Well, boys," said he, looking up from his work with a smile, "and what can I do for you? Walking, eh?--to New York!" and he whistled, as every one did when they learned our mysterious business.

Then, taking Colin's shoe in his hand, he commenced to pound upon that instrument of torture, talking gaily the while. Presently he asked, "Do you care about music?" and on our eagerly agreeing that we did, "All right," he said, "we'll close the shop for a few minutes and have some."

Then, moving around on his seat, like some heroic half-figure bust on its pedestal, he rummaged among the litter of leather and tools at his side, and produced a guitar from its baize bag, also a mouth organ, which by some ingenious wire arrangement he fastened around his neck, so that he might press his lips upon it, leaving his hands free for the guitar.

Then, "Ready?" said he, and, applying himself simultaneously to the guitar and the harmonica, off he started with a quite electrical gusto into a spirited fandango that made the little shop dance and rattle with merriment. You would have said that a whole orchestra was there, such a volume and variety of musical sound did Billy contrive to evoke from his two instruments.

"There!" he said, with a humorous chuckle, pus.h.i.+ng the harmonica aside from his mouth, "what do you think of that for an overture?" He had completely hypnotized us with his infectious high spirits, and we were able to applaud him sincerely, for this lonely cobbler of shoes was evidently a natural well of music, and was, besides, no little of an executant.

"Now I'll give you an imitation of grand opera," he said; and then he launched into the drollest burlesque of a fas.h.i.+onable tenor and a prima-donna, as clever as could be. He was evidently a born mime as well as a musician, and presently delighted us with some farmyard imitations, and one particularly quaint impersonation, "an old lady singing with false teeth," sent us into fits of laughter.

"You ought to go into vaudeville," we both said spontaneously, with that vicious modern instinct to put private gifts to professional uses, and then Billy, with shy pride, admitted that he did do a little now and again in a professional way at harvest b.a.l.l.s (we thought of Sheldon Center) and the like.

"Perhaps you might like one of my professional letter-heads," he said, handing us one apiece. I think probably the reader would like one, too.

You must imagine it in the original, with fancy displayed professional type, regular "artiste" style, and a portrait of Billy, with his two instruments, in one corner. And "see thou mock him not," gentle reader!

_King of Them All BILLY WILLIAMS THE KING OF ALL IMITATORS Producing in Rapid Succession A GRAND REPERTOIRE of Imitations and Impersonations Consisting of_:

Minstrel Bands, Circus Bands, Killing Pigs, Cat Greeting Her Kitten, Barn-Yard of Hens and Roosters, Opera Singers with Guitar, Whistling with Guitar, Old Lady Singing with False Teeth, Cow and Calf, Harmonica with the Guitar, Arab Song, Trombone Solo with the Guitar.

Yes! "See thou mock him not," gentle reader, for Billy is no subject for any man's condescension. We were in his company scarcely an hour, but we went away with a great feeling of respect and tenderness for him, and we hope some day to drop in on him again, and hear his music and his quaint, manly wisdom.

"All alone in the world, Billy?"

A shade of sadness pa.s.sed over his face, and was gone again, as he smilingly answered, stroking the cat that purred and rubbed herself against his shoulder.

"Just puss and me and the guitar," he said. "The happiest of families.

Ah! Music's a great thing of a lonely evening."

And a sense of the brave loneliness of Billy's days swept over me as we shook his strong hand, and he gave us a cheery G.o.dspeed on our way. I am convinced that Billy could earn quite a salary on the vaudeville stage; but--no! he is better where he is, sitting there at his bench, with his black cat and his guitar and his singing, manly soul.

The twilight was rapidly thickening as we left Billy, once more bent over his work, and, the fear of "supper-time" in our hearts, we pushed on at extra speed toward our night's lodging at Mount Morris. The oak-trees gloomed denser on our right as we plowed along a villainously sandy road.

Labourers homing from the day's work greeted us now and again in the dimness, and presently one of these, plodding up behind us, broke forth into conversation:

"Ben-a carry pack-a lik-a dat-a--forty-two months--army--ol-a country,"

said the voice out of the darkness.

It was an Italian labourer on his way to supper, interested in our knapsacks.

"You're an Italian?"

"Me come from Pal-aer-mo."

The little chap was evidently in a talkative mood, and I nudged Colin to do the honours of the conversation.

"Pal-aer-mo? Indeed!" said Colin. "Fine city, I guess."

"Been-a Pal-aer-mo?" asked the Italian eagerly. Colin couldn't say that he had.

"Great city, Pal-aer-mo," continued our friend, "great theatre--cost sixteen million dollars."

There is nothing like a walking-trip for gathering information of this kind.

The Italian went on to explain that this country was a poor subst.i.tute for the "ol-a country."

"This country--rough country. In this country me do rough-a work," he explained apologetically; "in Pal-aer-mo do polit-a work."

And he accentuated his statement by a vicious side spit upon the American soil.

It transpired that the "polit-a work" on which he had been engaged in Pal-aer-mo had been waiting in a restaurant.

And so the poor soul chattered on, touching, not unintelligently, in his absurd English, on American politics, capital and labour, the rich and the poor. The hard lot of the poor man in America, and--"Pal-aer-mo,"

made the recurring burden of his talk, through which, a pathetic undertone, came to us a sense of the native poetry of his race.

Did he ever expect to return to Palermo? we asked him as we parted. "Ah!

many a night me dream of Pal-aer-mo," he called back, as, striking into a by-path, he disappeared in the darkness.

And then we came to a great iron bridge, sternly silhouetted in the sunset. On either side rose cliffs of darkness, and beneath, like sheets of cold moonlight, flowed the Genesee, a Dantesque effect of jet and silver, Stygian in its intensity and indescribably mournful. The banks of Acheron can not be more wildly _funebre_, and it was companionable to hear Colin's voice mimicking out of the darkness:

"In this country me do rough-a work. In Pal-aer-mo do polit-a work!"

"Poor chap!" I said, after a pause, thinking of our friend from Pal-aer-mo. "Do you know Hafiz, Colin?" I continued. "There is an ode of his that came back to me as our poor Italian was talking. I think I will say it to you. It is just the time and place for it."

"Do," said Colin. And then I repeated:

_"At sunset, when the eyes of exiles fill, And distance makes a desert of the heart, And all the lonely world grows lonelier still, I with the other exiles go apart, And offer up the stranger's evening prayer.

My body shakes with weeping as I pray, Thinking on all I love that are not there, So desolately absent far away-- My Love and Friend, and my own land and home.

O aching emptiness of evening skies!

O foolish heart, what tempted thee to roam So far away from the Beloved's eyes!

To the Beloved's country I belong-- I am a stranger in this foreign place; Strange are its streets, and strange to me its tongue; Strange to the stranger each familiar face.

'Tis not my city! Take me by the hand, Divine protector of the lonely ones, And lead me back to the Beloved's land-- Back to my friends and my companions O wind that blows from s.h.i.+raz, bring to me A little dust from my Beloved's street; Send Hafiz something, love, that comes from thee, Touched by thy hand, or trodden by thy feet."_

"My! but that makes one feel lonesome," was Colin's comment. "I wonder if there will be any mail from the folk at Mount Morris."

CHAPTER XIV

THE OLD LADY OF THE WALNUTS AND OTHERS

What manner of men we were and what our business was, thus wandering along the highroads with packs on our backs and stout sticks in our hands, was matter for no little speculation, and even suspicion, to the rural mind. We did not seem to fit in with any familiar cla.s.sification of vagabond. We might be peddlers, or we might be "hoboes," but there was a disquieting uncertainty about us, and we felt it necessary occasionally to make rea.s.suring explanations. Once or twice we found no opportunity to do this, as, for instance, one sinister, darksome evening, we stood in hesitation at a puzzling cross-road--near Dansville, I think--and awaited the coming of an approaching buggy from which to ask the way. It was driven by two ladies, who, on our making a signal of distress to them, immediately whipped up with evident alarm, and disappeared in a flash.

Dear things! they evidently antic.i.p.ated a hold-up, and no doubt arrived home with a breathless tale of two suspicious-looking characters hanging about the neighbourhood.